Prophecy: A Recipe

“Swaying Traditions” by Molly Phalan

You’ll need a fish and some sequins,
a bottle of good wine, sugar,
rock salt, a bag of mints, and maybe
an orange or two. This is not
a comprehensive list. Improvise a bit.
If it were meant to be simple, anyone
could do it. Are you still listening to me?
Good. Now you need to build a boat.
Not a real boat, an imaginary boat.
Exactly 12 feet and 4 inches long.
It should smell like pine trees
in your boat. You must stack coins
edge to edge. Bind them with candy
floss. It doesn’t matter what color.
It just needs to be sticky. You have
too many questions. Why would I know
when the flood is coming? Who said
it would end in a flood? I’m just telling
you to build a boat in your mind.
No easy fixes I’m afraid, but you can
eat the fish. Sequins make everything shine.
You’ll figure out the rest or you won’t.

Ellie White holds an MFA from Old Dominion University. She writes poetry and nonfiction. She has won an Academy of American Poets Poetry Prize, and has been nominated for both Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Breakwater Review, SLANT, The Columbia Review, Foundry and many other journals. Ellie’s second chapbook, Drift, was recently published by Dancing Girl Press. Her first full-length collection is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in December, 2019. She is a social media editor and reader for Muzzle Magazine. Ellie currently rents a basement in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia.  To read more of her work, visit her website: elliewhitewrites.com.